Chapter 15 #2
Full court. The great hall. The same hall where he was stripped and exposed, where Ithyris claimed him, where five hundred Drekian courtiers will watch while Syreth argues for the destruction of his bond.
"Does Ithyris know?"
Lira's expression tightens. "The prince knows."
"How angry is he?"
Lira hesitates, which is unprecedented. "The training courtyard is empty because the prince's sparring session destroyed three practice dummies and cracked a stone pillar. I would characterize his emotional state as volcanic."
Bryn stands.
Mithri grabs his arm. "He's angry enough to crack stone and you're going to walk up to him?"
Bryn looks at his sister. He thinks about the dream, the corridor, the prince's hands on his face in the grey morning light.
"He would never hurt me," he says. The certainty in his own voice surprises him.
It surprises Mithri too. He can see it register, the shift from worry to something closer to wonder, because Bryn has never in his life spoken about another person with that kind of absolute conviction, not even about her.
He walks out of the kitchen.
***
The training courtyard is a ruin.
Three practice dummies reduced to kindling.
A stone pillar cracked from base to midpoint.
The sparring sand churned with boot prints and claw marks.
Ithyris is standing in the center of it, shirtless, the scales on his shoulders and spine fully raised, dark violet and ridged, his fists clenched at his sides.
Bryn steps into the courtyard. His boot crunches on debris and the prince's head turns, fast, predatory, and his eyes find Bryn and they are blazing.
Not at him. The distinction is immediate and instinctive.
The rage is for Syreth. For the petition.
For the centuries of tradition that reduce a bond to a calculation and a person to a variable.
When the prince's gaze lands on Bryn, the rage doesn't disappear.
It shifts, parts, and behind it is something desperate and fierce and so nakedly protective that Bryn's chest constricts.
"You heard," Ithyris says.
"I heard."
"I will not let them..."
"I know."
Bryn crosses the courtyard and puts his hand flat against the prince's chest, over his heart. The frantic rhythm hammers beneath his palm. The scales under his fingers are warm and vibrating with the effort of containment.
Ithyris looks down at Bryn's hand. Looks at his face.
"They want to sever us." His voice is low, shaking at the edges. "They want to take you from me using my father's own law and I am trying very hard not to set something on fire."
"I can see that." Bryn looks at the cracked pillar. "You missed."
A breath escapes the prince. Not quite a laugh. The tension in his body shifts by one degree, and his hand comes up and covers Bryn's on his chest and presses it harder against his skin.
"The session is tonight," Ithyris says. "Full court. My father will adjudicate." His eyes are dark. "I will end it."
"How?"
"By telling them the truth. If they sever this bond, they sever me from this court. I will renounce the throne before I let them touch you."
The words land and detonate. Renounce the throne. His crown, his birthright, his kingdom. He would give it all up for a boy from a dying kingdom who showed up in a stolen dress and threw bread at a lord and can't stop arguing about grain tariffs.
"You can't do that," Bryn says. His voice is not steady.
"Watch me."
"Ithyris. You cannot abandon your kingdom for..."
"For what?" The prince's eyes bore into his.
"For the person I chose? For the man who walked into my fear and knelt on the floor and answered a question I've been asking for four hundred years?
" He dips his head until his forehead nearly touches Bryn's.
"There is nothing they can offer me that is worth more than you.
Let them take the crown. Let them take the palace and the Sovereignty itself.
I will have you, and the rest of it can burn. "
Bryn grips the waistband of the prince's trousers because his shirt is gone and Bryn needs something to hold onto and his hands are shaking.
"Don't burn anything," he says. His voice is wrecked. "Not yet. Go to the session. Say what you need to say. And I'll be there."
The prince's eyes search his face. Looking for the retreat. The deflection. The walls going up.
He doesn't find them. Bryn has nothing left to hide behind. The dream took it. The morning took it. The sight of the prince standing in the wreckage of a training courtyard, shaking with the effort of not burning his kingdom down for him, took the last of it.
Bryn rises onto his toes and presses his mouth to the prince's. Brief. Firm. It says: I'm here and I'm not running and they will not take me from you either.
Ithyris makes a sound against his mouth and his arms come around Bryn and lift him off the ground, his feet leaving the sand, and they stand in the destroyed courtyard and breathe.
***
The great hall is full.
Five hundred strong. The obsidian benches tiered and rising, the crystal veins pulsing with their slow amber rhythm, the full weight of the Drekian court assembled in the same hall where Bryn stood half-naked and defiant weeks ago.
The air is too warm, and Bryn realizes the heat is coming from Ithyris, who stands beside the king's seat radiating enough thermal energy to warm the first three rows of benches.
King Thalryn sits the throne. Silver-scaled where his son is violet, with the same amethyst eyes but colder, harder. His face reveals nothing.
Syreth stands in the center of the hall and speaks for twenty minutes.
She is thorough, methodical, precise. She cites precedent.
She references bloodline imperatives. She argues that a human male of no magical lineage, no political standing, and no demonstrable value to the Sovereignty represents an existential threat to the continuity of the Drekian crown.
She does not look at Bryn once.
He stands on the lower tier beside Mithri, whose hand is gripping his so hard the bones of his fingers grind together.
Lira stands behind them. He keeps his face neutral and his posture straight and listens to a woman dismantle his worth in front of five hundred people and does not flinch, because he has been listening to people tell him he is not enough for eighteen years and the skill set is the same regardless of the setting.
But something is different tonight.
The words land and they do not penetrate.
The hall in the dream was empty. This hall is full.
The boy on the floor was alone. Bryn is not alone.
Mithri is beside him. Lira is behind him.
And Ithyris is at the front of the hall and his eyes have not left Bryn's face since he entered and what flows through the bond is not fear.
It is certainty.
Syreth finishes. Thalryn's expression has not changed.
"The elders will speak," the king says. "In favor, or against."
The ancient green-scaled male speaks first. In favor. Traditional reasoning, bloodline preservation. The copper-marked male follows. In favor. The gold-scaled woman hesitates, then speaks in favor, though her voice lacks conviction and her eyes find Bryn's briefly before she looks away.
Three in favor.
The dark-scaled woman Bryn has barely spoken to speaks against. Her argument is terse: the bond was magically confirmed in two trials. Overriding confirmed magic sets a dangerous precedent. Syreth's mouth thins.
Three to one.
Ithyris steps forward.
The movement is deliberate. He walks to the center of the hall with the measured stride of someone who has decided something and is past hesitation. The hall goes still.
He faces his father. He faces the court.
"If you sever this bond," he says, and his voice fills every corner of the hall, low and clear and vibrating with controlled fury, "you sever me from this court."
The silence is absolute.
"I will not rule a kingdom that would destroy my mate to preserve its pride.
" The violet scales are rising on his throat, his forearms, his cheekbones.
The air around him shimmers. "I will renounce the throne.
I will walk out of this hall and out of this palace and out of this kingdom and I will take Bryn with me and you will have your pure bloodline and your preserved pride and an empty throne. "
The prince of the Drekian Sovereignty stands in the great hall of his ancestors with scales climbing his skin and fire in his eyes and offers to burn his inheritance to the ground for a human boy who is standing on the lower tier with his sister's hand in his and tears he will not shed pressing against the backs of his eyes.
Thalryn is silent for a long time.
Then the king says, quietly: "The petition is tabled."
Syreth's head snaps toward the throne. "Your Majesty..."
"Tabled."
The word is final. Thalryn's eyes move from his son to Bryn and rest on his face for three seconds that feel like hours.
Bryn holds his gaze. The king's expression does not change, but something moves behind it, deep and unreadable.
Then Thalryn rises and walks out of the hall and the session is over.
The court exhales. Five hundred people begin to move and murmur and the sound washes over Bryn and Ithyris is turning from the center of the hall, his eyes finding Bryn's across the distance, and the look on his face is fierce and raw and unrepentant.
Mithri squeezes his hand until the bones creak.
"Breathe," she whispers.
Bryn breathes.
They leave the hall together. Ithyris meets them in the corridor, still vibrating with unspent fury, and takes one look at Bryn's face and pulls him into his arms, right there, in front of Mithri and Lira and two courtiers who quickly decide to look elsewhere.
He holds Bryn against his chest with his mouth at his temple and his arms shaking and says nothing.
Bryn says nothing. Mithri stands beside them with wet eyes and a jaw set in steel and they breathe.
Later, in the dark, the prince presses his mouth to Bryn's temple and says, quiet and absolute: "They will not take you from me."
Bryn believes him. Not as a hope. As a fact, carved into the same stone as the mountain that holds them, as permanent as the man whose arms are wrapped around him.
He doesn't sleep for hours. But this time, the wakefulness is not fear.
It is the slow, disorienting process of feeling something shift inside him, a weight redistributing, a load he has carried alone for eighteen years being shouldered by someone strong enough to bear it and stubborn enough to insist.
He presses back against the prince's chest. Ithyris's arm tightens.
He stays.